The party responsible for the death of the small and mid-budget film, according to Gill, is democracy. The digital revolution has put the power to make films into the hands of every helot, resulting in a ten-fold increase in the number of submissions to Sundance every year. There has not been an corollary increase in quality.

Most of the films are flat-out awful," said Mr. Gill, the head of the independent company The Film Department. "Trust me, I have had to sit through tons of them over the years. Let me put it another way: the digital revolution is here," he said, and boy, is it underwhelming.